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  I launch myself into Millie’s arms.

  “Oh, Millie, I’m so sorry! I thought Angel was a friend—I thought they were all friends, but they weren’t, Millie, they weren’t! But I’m just so dumb about those things, and I don’t want to be, but I am—and then they told me the theatre was just a cool place everyone in town goes to, and I should have been honored they were letting me in on something—like it would make me one of them and one of you, but it didn’t—and when I was in the orchestra pit, they started tearing up the theatre—and I promise, Millie, I promise they never told me they were going to do that. I had no idea—you have to believe me! And then the police show up, and I’m all alone—and they left me—and then I was handcuffed—and then there was yelling—and then you two show up. And . . . I haven’t slept a wink.”

  I am bawling. Full-on, snot-galore, puffy-eyed, splotchy-skin, wet-face bawling. Millie awkwardly pats me, then sets me away from her.

  I wipe at my face and nose. She probably can’t stand to touch me. Probably can’t even stand to be in the same room as me.

  “Katie, I’ve got some breakfast for you downstairs, and then James and I would like to talk to you.”

  “Millie, you have to know I—”

  “You have five minutes. Then I want you dressed and downstairs.” She turns on her small, fashionable heels and leaves my bedroom.

  I have five minutes. Five minutes before I am told I’m a disappointing failure. Five minutes before I’m told to pack up my clothes—the ones I came in—and hit the door. Five minutes before my glimpse of a life I didn’t even know was possible is over. No more steak dinners around a dinner table. No more shopping trips. No more pink, fluffy bedroom. No more parents, no home, no In Between.

  James and Millie are seated in the breakfast nook, the morning sun shining on them and highlighting the signs of their own lack of sleep. Even Rocky looks worn out. Spotting me at the bottom of the stairs, Millie gets up and goes to the stove to deal with my breakfast.

  “I’m not hungry.” I couldn’t possibly eat anything. Nothing that would stay down anyway. I wonder how my “friends” are doing. Do they even feel guilty? I probably have enough guilt and misery for all of us. Not that they care.

  “You need to eat, Katie.” Millie continues to fix my breakfast, taking some pancake batter and spooning it onto a hot skillet.

  I look at the food. “Thanks, but I just can’t eat.”

  My foster mother spoons out two more pancakes.

  “She says she doesn’t want any breakfast.” James Scott’s voice is razor sharp, and Millie’s head snaps up.

  “And I said she needs to eat.” Millie’s eyes are fire, and I’m taken aback at her intensity.

  “Millie, for crying out loud, would you just quit? Sit down.”

  So not only have I been a part of ruining the Scotts’ theatre, but thanks to me, they’re fighting. Town’s favorite pastor and wife divorce. Cause? One week with me.

  Millie stares at James, then goes back to her pancakes, at last flipping them onto a plate, which she leaves on the counter.

  Setting a glass of juice in front of me, like an unspoken last word on the breakfast issue, Millie joins us at the table.

  “Katie—”

  “James, I wanted to tell you I—”

  Millie holds up a hand. “Be quiet, Katie.”

  Words spin in my head, and I want to try them all, hoping some will be the right combination to make the Scotts magically forgive me.

  “We need you to listen. Millie and I have not been to bed yet, and we have had a chance to discuss this situation thoroughly and come to some conclusions.”

  The waterworks start again, as shame sets my lip quivering and tears sliding down my cheeks. “I’m sorry. And I know I’m being sent back.”

  I blow my nose in a paper towel and dash away my tears on my sweatshirt. I can’t even look at the two of them.

  “You’re not going anywhere.” James’s voice has my full attention. “And I mean that literally. You will not be allowed to do anything socially for a very long time. If it isn’t school or church related, you more than likely will not be leaving this house.”

  “What?” Maybe Chief Hoover’s yelling damaged my hearing. Surely James didn’t say what I thought he just said. No walking papers?

  “We’ve decided not to send you back.” Millie looks at me like What do you think about that, hot stuff? I can tell I’ve broken her trust in me. I miss her fun face. This serious, cautious expression just isn’t her.

  “There are going to be a lot of changes around here for you, so you might as well get comfortable and listen.” James rests an elbow on the table. “First of all, there will be no charges pressed against any of you. Your friends and their parents were contacted early this morning, and we have full statements of guilt from all of them. Their stories matched yours. Instead of pressing charges and leaving them with criminal records, Millie and I have prayed about this and have come up with a reasonable punishment the police and the kids’ parents have accepted. Since they did the vandalism, they will work in the community on behalf of the church for the next year. With their parents’ supervision, they will take regular shifts at our community soup kitchen, do errands and odd jobs for some of our elderly church members, and complete a whole list of useful tasks.”

  Whoa, they got off easy. I can’t believe they weren’t arrested. I don’t know how they didn’t get charged. I guess the pastor has some pull around here.

  James rubs the bridge of his nose like he’s trying to exorcise a headache (I think its name is Katie), then continues. “You, while you didn’t participate in the destruction of the theatre, did break the law by being there. And you also blatantly disobeyed us by leaving Angel’s home and running around in the middle of the night.”

  “But I—” An excuse is ready to fly off my tongue, but I swallow it. “Yes, sir.”

  “As I was saying, you, too, are guilty, though of lesser charges.” James pauses to make sure he has my full attention. “Millie and I are very, very disappointed in you. We trusted you, and you have let us down.” His voice is quiet, but his words are ringing in my ears. “You are not allowed to socialize with the group you were keeping company with last night. We can’t stop you from seeing them at school, but we hope you realize a real friend doesn’t pressure you into disobeying your parents. And a real friend doesn’t lie to you or ask you to break the law.”

  “Yes, I know.” Ah, the tears. Again. And the runny nose. I should just wad up some tissues and stick them in my nostrils to permanently stop the drip. It would be a lot easier. I’m way past the point of trying to hold onto any dignity here.

  “And Millie and I have decided that, though we didn’t make you go to church this past Wednesday night, you will be there every Wednesday evening from now on. This will give you a chance to interact with your peers and hopefully make some new, more—how shall I put it?—law-abiding friends.”

  “This is the easy stuff, Katie.” Millie pushes my juice glass toward me with a pointed look. I obediently raise the glass and force some down. “James, get to the consequences part.”

  “You will take the school bus to the theatre after school and work there for a couple of hours every day with one of us. You will help us repair what your friends have destroyed and get us back on track with our renovation.”

  “Sure, sure. I’ll definitely do that. But why me working in the theatre and not Angel and those guys?”

  “We don’t want them anywhere near our theatre.” Millie’s voice has ice in it, and her fierce protectiveness of the Valiant has me bristling.

  “I, um . . . I never knew you had a theatre.” I think there are more than a few things about the Scotts I don’t know.

  “James and I bought the Valiant about two years ago. It was the crowning jewel of the town once, but it had been abandoned for a few decades by the time we got to it. We have been refurbishing it in hopes of opening it back up to the community this fall.” Millie
glances at James. “In fact, we recently held auditions for Romeo and Juliet, and our grand opening and premiere was to be the last weekend of October.”

  A cannonball settles in my stomach. Their theatre. Now it won’t be done in time for the grand opening. And I had a part in it.

  One choice.

  That’s all it comes down to. One choice, one wrong choice, and I sit here eaten up with guilt and a hundred other horrible feelings I can’t even begin to name. I have less than six weeks to do whatever I can to get the theatre ready. I will drive nails. I will paint walls like it’s an Olympic event. I will spackle like I have never spackled before.

  “Well, if it’s meant to be, it will happen,” James says gruffly. Millie nods, though she hardly looks like she agrees. She seems . . . heartbroken.

  Great. Add dream-crusher to my list of crimes.

  “So, continuing with your punishment, we come to the next part. Millie’s mother, Maxine, needs someone to read to her, so you will be going to Shady Acres once a week to provide that service.” James takes a long drink of coffee, as if the idea of spending that kind of time with Maxine leaves a bad taste in his mouth. But I can do this. I’m not going to complain. Whatever they want me to do, I’ll do it. I would shave that woman’s armpits to make up for all of this.

  Then an idea hits me. Does Maxine have a reading problem? Maybe she was so busy doing the cha-cha in her younger years she didn’t take the time to brush up on her phonics. “Maxine can’t read, can she?”

  “Well, of course she can read, Katie. Don’t be ridiculous,” Millie sputters.

  And now I’ve just insulted Millie’s mother. I’m on a roll. Maybe for my big finish I’ll kick her dog.

  “Mother has yet to adjust to her new bifocals, and it makes it hard for her to see to read. She hasn’t been able to read at all in the last few months, and even though I’ve gotten her some books on CD, it’s not the same. She’s a voracious reader of the classics.”

  James chokes on his coffee.

  “James, you know how much she loves her Chaucer.”

  Millie’s husband looks heavenward, like he’s sending a quick SOS to God for patience. I don’t think he and Millie think of the same person when they think of Maxine.

  “So, as James was saying, you will go once a week and read to my mother. I know she will be grateful for the company and the books. I think Tuesdays will probably be a good day. Her afternoons are usually pretty full except for Tuesday. Mother has bridge on Monday, Bingo on Wednesdays, her knitting club on Thursday mornings, and salsa lessons on Fridays. What she does on Saturday and Sunday, I have no idea.”

  “Nor do we want to know,” James mumbles to no one in particular. “And finally, we want to lay down some rules about school work. On the afternoon you went to Angel’s, we got a call from your Algebra teacher. Apparently in the week you have been in school, you have yet to turn in an assignment to Mr. Smith, and you have failed a quiz. Would you like to explain yourself?” James is through making cracks about Mad Maxine and back to being intimidating. I’ve noticed his forehead wrinkles when he’s serious.

  Right now he sort of resembles a Shar Pei.

  “I don’t know.”

  Millie and James exchange a look of anger-infused exasperation.

  “You don’t know? You don’t know how you have a zero in Algebra? You don’t know how you forgot to do a week’s worth of homework? You can’t remember why you didn’t study for the quiz?” Millie huffs, and I can see she is about to leave mad and move on to furious.

  “I don’t know.” I drop my head and study my hands. What am I supposed to say?

  “Look, young lady. I’ve had just about enough of—”

  “Katie, what is it you don’t know?” James halts his wife’s oncoming rant.

  I sit there in silence. I need to clip my fingernails. And some of that black fingernail polish still covers my pinky nail.

  “Katie, what is it you don’t know? You don’t know as in you don’t care, or you don’t know as in you don’t understand math?” James’s voice isn’t so threatening now. In fact, it’s borderline nice.

  I nervously chew on my blackened pinky nail. “I . . . I, um.” My shoulders rise in a shrug. It’s hard to admit you’re stupid. “I don’t know because I don’t get it.” There. You happy? I’m stupid. “I don’t know a trinomial from a polynomial, a variable from an exponent, and I sure don’t know why sometimes a negative can magically turn into a positive. And FOIL? Well, that’s what cheeseburgers come in.”

  “Okay. All right. Now we’re getting somewhere.” James nods.

  “Yeah, we’ve gotten somewhere.” I sniff. “We’ve gotten to the point where you realize I’m an idiot. I’m in the tenth grade, and I don’t get even a little bit of what’s going on in Algebra. I’d put it into a percentage for you, but I don’t know how!” Oh, math. My deep, dark secret. I’ve been able to skate by until now. Math . . . it haunts me and follows me—like bad BO.

  “Millie wasn’t sure, but I thought that might be the case.”

  “That I’m stupid?”

  “Not understanding something doesn’t make you dumb,” James says. “I’m sure you’ve been in and out of school enough to miss out on some important skills. In fact, you might be behind on a few subjects, so I decided that what you need is a tutor. I put in a call to Frances Vega’s parents this morning.”

  They called Frances? They told her about my criminal weekend? They told her about my math handicap? Is this part of the punishment too?

  James continues his explanation. “Frances is a bit of a math whiz, so she has offered to come over a few times a week to tutor you in Algebra. I can help, too, of course, but I thought it might be better to have someone your own age who’s been through the same class. Who knows, Algebra might have changed since I saw it last.”

  Nope, I’m pretty sure it’s the same. It’s gross now, and it was probably gross back then. And I seriously do not want Frances’s help with anything.

  “But . . . but . . . couldn’t we get someone else? Someone who’s not Frances?”

  “We like Frances, and more importantly, we trust her.” These frosty words come from Millie, who is obviously going to need some time to get over being mad at me. “Also we will be paying her for the tutoring, so we hope you will take advantage of the offer of help and take it seriously. We will focus on the math, and then if we see other subjects that need attention, I’m sure she can help you with those too.”

  “Does Frances know what happened? What I did?” Humiliation on so many levels here.

  James shakes his head. “No. But this is a small town. People talking about the theatre break-in is just one of the consequences you are going to have to deal with.”

  Right. Well, it’s not like I had a sterling reputation to protect anyway. And I wasn’t planning on running for student-body president, so my nonexistent popularity plummeting into the negatives probably won’t make much of a difference.

  I guess I’ll be returning to my toilet seat for lunch.

  Time to break out the carrot sticks and reclaim my porcelain throne.

  Chapter 21

  I spent the rest of Saturday in my room doing important things like arranging my eye shadows in their order on the color wheel, dusting my blinds four different times, counting the leaves on the crooked oak tree outside my window, timing how long I could hold my breath while standing on one leg, and avoiding the Scotts as much as possible.

  I now know what an eon feels like.

  The sun finally went down on that day, and I even managed to get a few hours of sleep. Which was a nice break from all the thinking I’ve been doing lately.

  I awaken this morning to a sunshiny Sunday, and despite the fact that I desperately want to pull the covers over my head and stay hidden in my room for yet another day—if not forever—I sit up and place both feet on the cool hardwood floor. With a new resolve, within thirty minutes I am totally awake, showered, and dressed in a cute skirt and matching
sweater Millie bought me last week. It’s time for Sunday school and church.

  Sunday school—the words alone send shivers down my spine. I’m so not about church. And I feel certain anything with the word school tacked onto it can’t be good.

  But starting today, I am going to be perfect. I am going to make the Scotts trust me, proud to know me, and hopefully want to keep me long enough that I can wear everything in my closet at least once. The Scotts are not going to know what hit them. Good-bye, Katie, daughter of disaster, chaos, and bad decisions.

  Now, if I only knew for sure how to make that happen. The first step in my Katie Parker makeover plan is to find and observe a role model. And since Miss Perfect herself, Frances Vega, will be in my home at least once a week, not to mention all the times I’ll be around her at church now, she seems a likely candidate. I will watch and observe Frances like she’s some rare bird on the Discovery channel. Notes will be taken, observations recorded. This might even call for some charts and graphs. Whatever it takes, I stand ready.

  So today’s goals are to get through breakfast without making anyone mad, suffer through church and watch Frances’s every move, and hopefully get Millie to talk to me without growling.

  The last one is pretty iffy.

  I slink down the steps (pausing at step number ten to plaster a pleasant smile on my face and again at step number six to deal with a wedgie), and find Millie sitting at the table in the breakfast nook, drinking coffee. She stares out the window, lost in thought. And I don’t think it’s because she’s counting oak leaves.

  I clear my throat, and my non-Mom turns her attention my direction.

  “You look very nice. I knew that outfit would look good on you.” Her kind words are spoken in a near monotone. “You’re up kind of early.”

  “I’m ready for Sunday school,” I proclaim, like I’ve just announced my acceptance to Harvard or my discovery of the cure for cancer.

  Call it a trick of the light, but I think I see Millie’s mouth twitch ever so slightly, like she’s thinking about being amused.